


The Breaking Point

by mols



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-09-26 15:35:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mols/pseuds/mols
Summary: For soldiers, going back home can be uniquely difficult, and for a man in the 40' to be in love with another it can get even harder to deal with life back home.Back to the States, everything is going downhill between Lew and Dick, and when some feelings come to the surface, it seems to just get worse...until it gets much better.





	The Breaking Point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [armsofthestorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/armsofthestorm/gifts).



> armsofthestorm,
> 
> I hope you have had a great Christmas or/& an amazing end of the year <3 I made two fics for you because I couldn't finish the first one (yet), but I hope you like them both (when I finish the other one, too). Now enjoy a post-war angst with comfort!
> 
> Happy New Year!

When Dick comes back to Nixon, he tries not to think about his next encounter with Nix, asks the heavens that it doesn’t happen so soon - Dick has never been a coward, but he knows he doesn’t want to talk about his feelings, or whatever had happened between them. So he ends up trying to keep his mind as blank as it’s possible, a safe haven for a possible soon to be good night sleep. He’s tired and he doesn’t need to torment his mind with pointless, silly expectations now.  
  
Not much longer, his train of thought is broken by the taxi he got into the train station pulling to the sidewalk one house away from his little cottage front. Its light coloring is now bathed on shadows and the shadows of lost leaves in the late evening. It’s a small, but comfortable place he had found not so far from the company, he even has the sweet fortune to just need to walk to work after breakfast, and his characteristic dawn time run. He mostly lives alone here, while Nix lives and stays more in the Nixon mansion with Irene and his dad these days.

He shakes his head, walking out of the taxi, trying to forget Nix for that night at least. He doesn’t need to think of him right now. He pays the driver and lets the man keep the change. All he needs is a good night sleep now. He doesn’t expect to have anything in the fridge to keep his stomach quiet; he isn’t really hungry either way, he has his stomach actually on folds instead. Maybe a shower before bed would fit him well.

He climbs up the few stairs to his house, his right hand pulling the key from a pants’ pocket feeling the silk of an earlier stained tie fleeing from his fingers; all darkened inside as it was supposed to be. He sighs, he shouldn’t wish it to be otherwise when he knows he could expect just as much from Nix these days. Even when Nix paid him sporadic visits, they were minimal as the word could give away.

Dick turns the key into the slot with a heavy sensation into his wrist but ignores it and pushes the door open. As tired as Dick is, he doesn’t catch in the well maintained light pink painted front of the cottage or looks inside before taking his suitcase inside and his hat to rest it on a hanger but it’s stopped midway as he catches out of his eye dark pupils staring back at him from an armchair; although the room is dark, the pupils shiny bright anyway.

He raises his eyebrows as he starts moving again, slowly as his eyes study Lew’s back watching him while Dick takes the hat and his jacket to the clothing hook while he closes the door behind him, almost forgetting to take the key back to the inner side of the door to secure it close.

“What are you doing here?” It’s the first words he says as he lets the keys slide from his fingers onto a small desk in the living room, and before he turns the light on.  
  
He can’t believe in his eyes and something like anger rises into his chest like a flame that had never been extinguished. He had thought that Lew would still be out, with his father, or sleeping his eyes off when he came back, the hour he comes back, but it isn’t the case.

“Why did you go?” Nix’s voice sounds so small that it squeezes Dick’s heart within it, he detests to be the cause of such a pain, but he still feels the anger there, like something you keep sensing by the side of your eye, even when you took your eyes away against your more instinctive will.  
  
It takes a long minute before the words are out of Dick’s mouth:

“I’m sorry.” Dick shift his eyes down, speaking as quietly as Nix’s tone had been because Dick still feels ashamed and wrong for everything, and even now he feels wrong and only being able to say that.

It’s so damn frustrating because he feels angry but he also feels bad and sorry for walking away. It looks wrong no matter how much he talks to himself that he did the right thing, that if even it weren’t the most righteous way to deal with that, he knew Nix hasn’t done anything to deserve anything better from him lately.

“But why, Dick? Why?” Nix’s voice though raises at the repetition and Dick knows he can’t really face Nix, not now.

All he knows is that he couldn’t be there, he had felt unsure, weird, even used somehow; as a matter of fact, he doesn't feel so different now; although the degree of how overwhelmed he felt had changed to a vague anxiety projected solid into his throat, like an aching throat when he swallowed.

Not that Lew would do that, not consciously, he couldn’t be that cruel. Nix could be a lot of things but never that cruel. But Dick has feelings too, feelings that he had bottled up a long time ago and now he isn’t sure that he wants to open them up, simply because Nix decided that he needed something more to keep himself going.

“I don’t,” Dick starts, looking at a porcelain ballerina in a small desk in a corner of his living room, caressing it slightly by the fingertips, an ornament gift from Annie for his new house, a piece of home in that foreign city he has been living the last years in because he couldn’t bear the idea of letting go of Lew, of all or of the little they could ever have together, “I don’t really want to talk about it, Lew.”

“Why not, Dick?” Nix raises and Dick senses it although he has his body turned away from Lew the whole time. He really doesn’t want to talk about it at all.

“Just let it be, Nix...please,” and now he is begging to keep everything shut and sealed, like before, like when Nix didn’t invade his privacy like that. Is it so much to ask? A space for his wrong feelings, another for his dignity.

Dick just wants to keep himself sane, their friendship unstained.

He can hear Lew sighing behind him and by the side of his eye, walking away. Dick thinks ‘that’s what I thought,’ and shakes his head disappointed. Passionately, Dick still wishes Lew would have kept going, would’ve kept pushing, maybe that way he would show he really cared and that Nix wasn’t mixing up his hands for his feet, that he genuinely have always had the same feelings Dick has always sustained and kept in check inside his heavy heart, since the war, since all those dead boys.

Dick nibbles at his lower lip, he shouldn’t think of them - those honorable, great men - when he was lamenting such a silly subject, probably even a wrong one anyway. It’s not like he’s allowed, as the conscientious person he wants to be, someone that always tries to be righteous about his decisions and his actions, to act on sinful feelings; because the target of those was a man, someone married, someone that shared the same sex; some of the same curves of his body.

He sighs, falling on a sofa after walking around the armchair where Lew was lay on, his eyes dark, purple bags ornamented his still jovial face.

Dick knows he needs to calm down, to relax, and to push back those feelings to a deep, dark, unkempt place in his soul where they should have never gone out in the first place, in no way, especially not running away from his best friend.

Steps come to his ears as he looks up from his hands and the dirty looking light green carpet.

“You have to be kidding me, Dick!” Lew bursts back into the living room, “There’s no goddamn reason in the whole fucking world for you, of all people to have done that!” he points Dick out with his index finger, “Seriously. I know you, and you couldn’t do that if you didn’t think it was...If you didn’t have to make it right to me, too.”

Nix’s shaking with a glass of something amber on his hand, his wrist clock, which seems as thick as the four inches glass, shakes with it, hanging from his thinner wrist. His eyes are uncommonly red, as if they had been crying.

They were back at home, but everything seems to just get worse with time anyway - the thought makes his heart stings, makes Dick think how ungrateful he, they sound to think, to feel like that, but the sentiment is that they were not ready to deal with any of that, with themselves, now that they had to let war behind as if it never were, as if it didn’t let prints in their souls.

Dick shakes his head, biting at lower lip. There was no good result to discuss a matter like this with both of them in no state to be reasonable to each other.

“It’s late, Lew,” he pulls from the sofa, drifting his eyes away from really focusing on anything, the balls of his heels ache and he slight grimaces, just a frowning of the lips, before throwing a considerate glance at Nix’s general direction as he takes back his suitcase from the floor, close to the front door “Let’s... let's talk tomorrow, alright?”

Nix doesn’t answer but he allows Dick to move away without an argument, so Dick understands it as a time to think through, to rest first.

 

* * *

 

Dick is astonished that Nix gave him a moment to reflect, to rest. Maybe he’s as tired as Dick is. Or, perhaps, Nix is too drunk to argue but sober enough to understand that a shouting match by himself wasn’t going to work with Dick.

He is kind relieved - although not at peace - that he can lay down his aching head on the pillow for a bit; even when he still doesn’t feel completely comfortable with cotton, as if the material was strange to his senses since he had gotten used to anything but.

He takes a quick shower to wash down the sweat and the heavier, thicker and sticking physical exhaustion that comes from the sweat and goes to bed after pulling some light pajamas from his wardrobe, in his small and humble bedroom, kind naked by the lack of personal touch and furniture besides the bed and the closet.

As he dresses, he can hear dull noises from things being moved around coming from the also narrow bedroom beside his. Nix’s staying with him, for whatever reason Dick can’t understand or wants to hope for.

He can figure a radio playing in the distance, at a quiet, fainted tone. It brings him distant memories, nice moments together but he shakes his head. Now, this just sounds like noise from the back of his head, like something that belonged to his imagination only.

When he goes to bed, he has problems to sleep.

His eyes end up aching because the sleep suddenly takes its time to come. His mind relentlessly working; his body, aching, although all he really wants is to rest for the following day to come.

He rolls on the bed, his head pounding, his eyes unable to close completely. His hands folded and placed under the pillow. Dick breathes, trying to ignore how much he misses him, how much he feels needy for affection and body contact, especially of the man he loves, the man he craves.

Dick closes his eyes with difficulty, squeezing his hands together. He starts thinking about the things they had passed through, the days they slept together, the times he found a hand embracing his stomach in the middle of the night, before dawn.

He sleeps thinking of a body against his, like before, a warm breath on his ear. He detests to admit and to allow his mind to wander to such places, but as sleep comes, he naturally loses his grip on his imagination, and Dick can just think of all he wants from his life.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up the next morning, it takes some time for him to remember last night and that Lew may still be in the house.

After getting the fog away from his eyes, he slowly pulls from the bed, his body already covered on sweat. He doesn’t remember what he had dreamed about but he knows it had given a keen impression on him otherwise he wouldn’t feel as mentally exhausted in the morning as he feels then.

He pulls his flip-flops from under the bed and goes to the bathroom.

When he gets downstairs, Lew is drinking coffee, watching the neighborhood through the small kitchen sink window.

Dick swallows.

“You have a nice place here, Dick,” Nix comments out of nowhere, resting his mug on the sink as he leans a hip on the furniture's top.

Dick doesn’t know what to answer but nods; his eyes wander tiredly over the neat furniture and the light blue colored wallpaper, he likes it here although the place’s quite small, especially for the family Dick wishes to have in a future. Sometimes, Dick feels a vague longing for his childhood home, like nostalgy it feels like here or anywhere else will never be like before.

“The actual Mrs. Nixon’s baby boy would have loved living in a place like this,” Nix says, still looking away, arching his head to the side as if following a particular, curious figure on the soft morning light.

Dick thinks about replying, about asking if he’d have really liked living in a place as small as this - especially in comparison to the mansions and luxurious hotel rooms the Nixons would always stay in abroad, but he decides to not say anything instead, he just allows Nix to finish whatever he means by staying, even when Dick had refused to talk the night before.

“In a cozy place, a place that didn’t feel like fill up with ghosts,” Nix turns around, as if he had said something simple, common; that didn’t need explanation or further contextualization; sipping at his mug before moving it as if in a toast “With living, standard people for once.”

Dick raises an eyebrow:

“Well, I’m sure there might be some ghosts around here, Nix, that’s not such a new place either.”

“It may have better ones, ya know? Like Aunt Brigitte, she wasn’t particularly brilliant, but she had a golden heart and she let me pet her puppies.”

“Seems fair, I guess.”

“Damn sure it is... Here I have you, too,” Nix says quietly, pulling a chair to the table; his face is so tense and serious that makes Dick feel a little unease, the guilt aching in his chest.

Dick isn’t sure he really wants Nix to keep going on that topic, but he sits down in front of his friend all the same.

“Yeah?” Dick asks, feeling his middle finger pad on already a little dusty table; he would need to get back to cleaning things around here, he thinks, trying to ignore his own blushing cheeks.

“Yeah, Dick,” Nix says and Dick glances up in a mix of curiosity and expectation, of fear and anxiety “I don’t have much...I mean, I don’t have many people I really want around me, you know?”

Dick nods in an unspeakable motion for Lew to keep going.

“And I...I think the company would lose a lot without you,” Nix looks down to his hands, folded together over the table.

And Dick snorts.

“The company huh?”

“Yeah,” Nix starts, then looks at Dick, suddenly and uncharacteristically shy, “I’d lose a lot, too.”

Dick can feel the betraying flame of hope growing onto his heart and he wants desperately to shut it down with a cupped hand, as if anyone could see how his heart was racing against his ribcage; it suddenly hurts on his chest too, as if mind, soul couldn’t handle to hold his beating heart back, inside his body.

“Well, I want a family too, Nix,” Dick confesses, his voice slightly hoarse; but he’s telling the truth, the cold truth, the elephant in the room that Nix had himself ignored, as matter of fact even his own most of his life, even when he was married with a kid.

“I do…” Nix stops, he cannot say he does want it, can he?

Dick nibbles at a small patch of his lip skin.  
  
“You don’t need to…” And he knows Nix knows that he’s talking about what Nix really *doesn’t* want and not about if he should or shouldn’t have a family, kids; it was important to Dick - Dick supposes everybody was somewhat brought up to think it important - but he doesn’t discuss these things with Lew, not anymore. Lew has never really dreamed about this whole thing, so Dick doesn’t push it anymore; no matter what Nix wants though, he sure has a family, a kid he needs to take care of - even when this kid was not exactly the most wanted.

“I do, though,” Nix says, quietly, and it feels like a dam cracking, bursting, “I do want a family, Dick,” and by Nix’s struggled tone, how he fidgets with inner side of his fingers, Dick knows he’s about crying, not that he would let himself do it, but his body was certainly pushing for it. Dick wants to reach out for Lew but he feels clang to the floor, like it was too much, his heavy heart weighing too much over his body, his feet rooted into the ground...

‘What changed?’ passes through Dick’s mind but he doesn’t speak then, either. He knows Lew isn’t finished and he really wants to know what had happened to his friend. Why was he sitting around in his father’s office entire night outs as if they had always been the best of friends? Why did Nix take the time to pester Dick around until Dick couldn’t delay their needed conversation since yesterday?

“You changed it,” Nix answers, as if listening to Dick’s thoughts, “You were the one who did this.”

Dick frowns at the that, he doesn’t know how to take this:

“Me?”

“Yes, Dick,” Lew sips at his coffee as if for habit but pushes it aside with a grimace when he realizes it went cold and too bitter for his taste, far too bitter, “You. Your goddamn self made me want to have a normal life, a life without gamblings, drinks...At least not like this,” he glances at his mug and Dick understands that he had spiked his coffee as he always did, “Not that it will change tomorrow, ya know, I’m a man of habit.”

Dick snorts.

Nix almost manages a faint smile before his face lines go soft, almost melancholic again. His eyes swelling with water.

Dick breathes deeply, he doesn’t like to see Lew like this but he needs more. He needs to be sure of what is happening.

“So, are you gonna explain why all this?” Dick asks, he is a little impatient now that Nix is acting like he was confessing so much while Dick only felt on the dark all the same, “I mean, you wanted to talk, Lew, so am I here: what do you mean by all this?”

“Well, Dick, that I want you,” Nix says conversationally as if it were nothing, soaking his words with unwanted emotional anyway “that I want whatever the fucking life we can get together. That I…”

“That you…?”

“You know what? Fine,” Nix gets up and placing the mug on the sink, he turns around to Dick and walks around the table, “Get up, Dick!”

“What--?”

“Get-up”

Dick stands up and immediately shivers as Nix reaches up for his face, cupping his fair cheeks painted with his freckles, just like light brown dots in a kid’s sky drawing.

“I love you, Dick,” Nix says, quietly, secretly “and I’m not joking or drunk or...Ok, I was stupid. I’ve been very absent and done stupid things all over, but...seriously, I really, really love you.”

And then, Dick’s world is turned upside down, as simple as that. He knows those words don't change Lew’s past actions but they sure have an impact into Dick’s inmost.

But Nix’s voice wakes him to the world:

“Why did you go, Dick?” Lew asks, concern written all over his frowning face, his pained and blushing and handsome face.

Dick swallows, it takes a moment but he allows it to go:

“I was scared,” Dick says, looking down, his cheek at first unintentionally snuggling at Lew’s still just slightly calloused hands, “I didn’t know what was...that. I didn’t know what it meant to you, and what it meant to me. I needed space and time to think through.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I’ve been feeling like this about you since Fort Benning, not as much but I’ve been having feelings for you since forever.”

“Oh, Dick…”

“You’ve been...You have done…” he looks up at Lew, “You’ve forgotten me, Lew.”

Nix shakes his head:

“It’s not true, Di--”

“It is, Lew,” Dick pulls away, “I know you’re married now, again, but you haven’t been passing entire nights with your wife, but...drinking with your dad.”

Nix’s eyes shift down, his hand falling:

“I guess that’s true,” he looks away, “I’m sorry, Dick, I just thought...Drinking with dad is easy, to go out and be a jarhead is so damn easy, Dick. It made me forget, to get in such a comfortable buzz, Dick, I needed it--I thought it could solve things, for the moment being.”

Dick shakes his head, annoyed, upset. He walks to the sink, looking at the window. His eyes see nothing but a thin line of steam on the glass.

“But it didn’t.”

“No, it didn’t” Lew sighs, “And I want to solve it with you now, somehow. I don’t want to be with dad, I want to be with you. I want you to teach me how to live without….drinking.”

Dick doesn’t answer. He knows he wants to help Lew but he also knows how hard is it, how difficult is it and he quite doesn’t know if Lew will ever make to a reasonable lifestyle any time soon, on the next years even.

He wants it, he wants to try, to do everything in his power to make it work, but there still is a feeling that it can’t work, like it never did in war, when Lew seemed to have had the best days of his life; back then he would laugh and grin at things with such an easy. When he got shot, he grinned afterward, he thought the bullet missing his flesh was a funny joke from fate.

“Dick,” Lew calls, Dick can see him sliding a hand across the table for him, “Please, if you love me---”

“Don’t even doubt that, Lewis,” Dick looks back at him with a pointed glance and the corner of Nix’s lips twists upward, beaming his face overflows with color.

“I’ll do everything, Dick, everything to make it work some way.”

Dick sighs, he cannot let this opportunity go out of the window. He wants Lew so damn bad, not matter how much he tries to fill his mind if other possibilities, with random strange ladies he knows are attractive and responsible. And he really wants to help Lew if he is actually asking for him, begging for it even.

“Are you sure, Lew?” Dick turns around, “That you want to give up everything else?”

Dick knows that is an unrealistic propose, but he knows he can ask it and get the bare minimum, he just really wants this bare minimum; because he knows Lew will deliver it.

Lew breathes, his eyes pinned on the table. It must be an overload of feelings for him too. He knows how much work and willingness they are bargaining, and it isn’t little.

“I want you, Dick,” he says, firmly; then he looks up, his eyes red on the corners are determined, “And I want to be as good as a fucked-up like me can be to you. And it isn’t a way to excuse my poor choices, I swear.”

Dick raises an eyebrow at Lew and then shakes his head, his lips twisting a little upwards before uncrossing his arms over his chest and walking back to Lew.

“You aren’t as a disaster as you think you’re,” he says, cupping Lew’s jaw with both of his hands, “Not when you have a purpose,” he says, his eyes lowering down to Lew’s lips almost instinctively, leaning to kiss Lew, kiss him longer and unreservedly like never before.

_Last week Nix had come to Dick’s cottage with red eyes and drunk out of his mind. Dick was annoyed at the late hour. He even thought about ignoring him, but he brought Lew up to the extra room, beside his, to sleep out his drunkenness. He had never let Lew pass out and through the night on the streets, there wasn’t going to change then._

_He woke up again at 3 am, Nix was hesitantly knocking on the door and Dick watched through cloudy eyes as he came inside some time after, assessing the situation._

_Dick had no idea why but he pulled his hand out in an offer and Lew took it. He took Dick’s hand and then he climbed to the bed. Their lips met for a brief moment, a mere brush of lips, the alcohol breath making a confuse knot into Dick’s stomach, a mix of excitement and annoyance, but he helped Lew to lay down beside his, their legs entangled together._

_Lew wrapped Dick’s waist and pulled him to the mattress. Dick rested beside Lew, Nix’s head coming to lay down over the ginger’s chest._

_‘I love you, Dick’ Nix said against Dick’s white shirt, kissing his friend’s chest and falling asleep almost immediately._

 

Dick doesn’t remember much more than that, as far as he woke up and saw Lew lay down on his stomach, beside him, Dick ran away, taking some clothes to change in the living room and walking to the company to find a job out of the city to stay a away for a couple of days.

“I’m sorry I’ve fled,” Dick whispers, “I couldn't deal with that…”

“I know,” Nix says and they stay in some sort of embrace, Lew’s head awkwardly drew to Dick’s chest.

Some time passes, Dick doesn’t know how much. He feels like sensing every second of it with how loud their hearts beating together, chest to chest sound like, though. It feels like holding Lew’s lifeline onto his arms, his not as well prepared arms as before.

“We’ll make it work, Lew,” Dick says, he really wishes for all there was on Earth to be good enough, his wrist barely moves onto the side of Lew’s temple as he brushes his fingertips against Lew’s head top.

Lew nods against Dick’s chest.

“I trust you, Dick,” Nix murmured, “I trust you with my heart.”

It’s much more than what he’s asking from Lew, but he’d take it, with the courage and the loyalty of a soldier, he’d take it to protect, to take care of until he died.


End file.
